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Hip lit Wednesday: Granta's best young Spanish-language novelists

Two of Granta magazine's best young Spanish-language novelists will be in Los Angeles on Wednesday night for a discussion and holiday party. It'll be the snazziest literary event of the evening.

Wednesday night, writers Carlos Yushimito and Carlos Labbé will have a discussion at the Granta event/holiday party with David Kipen, whose tenure at the National Endowment for the Arts included a partnership between literary Los Angeles and the Guadalajara Book Fair. There also will be a game involving scissors and words and glue. And prizes. And, of course, drinks.

Chilean author Carlos Labbé is, Granta writes, "a pop musician, literary critic and editor and has a particular talent for recognizing the songs of Chilean birds." Peruvian writer Carlos Yushimito, who is studying for his PhD at Brown, told the New York Times, "I'm the kind of writer who has always circulated in small editions by alternative presses. This puts me in a different sphere."

Granta's semiregular "best young novelist" issues have, like the New Yorker's 20 Under 40 list, been reliable predictors of future literary success. This is the first time Granta has focused on authors writing in a language other than English; it features 22 young novelists. (Eight are from Argentina -- what's up with that?)